Video shows chlorine gas floating in Syrian streets

BEIRUT/DAMASCUS: Activists have posted a video of what they say is chlorine gas floating through the streets of a Syrian village and they accuse President Bashar Assad of mounting a chemical weapons campaign.
Activists and medical sources said the village of Kfar Zeita, in the central province of Hama 125 miles (200 km) north of Damascus, has been the focus of a two-month-old assault in which chlorine gas canisters have been dropped out of helicopters.
The Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has opened an investigation into the alleged chlorine attacks, more than a dozen of which have been reported since April 11 in several areas.
“Inspectors for the fact-finding mission arrived in Syria last week and are trying to get to some of the sites,” the OPCW told Reuters.
Text accompanying the opposition video, posted by a user called Mustapha Jamaa, said it was filmed on Thursday in Kfar Zeita by the Revolution General Commission opposition group.
It showed green-yellow gas in a street. A man runs away from the gas cloud with a woman who is holding a cloth to her mouth. Another man in camouflage trousers and wearing a gas mask calls out for a car to assist the woman. A voice off screen says: “Chlorine gas bombing. Yellow smoke.”
A freelance photographer told Reuters he arrived at the scene of the attack an hour after a helicopter dropped the bomb.
“The smell of chlorine was very obvious. It smelt like vinegar, or bleach. I started to cough and hyperventilate. My eyes were burning,” he said.
One of his photos showed the woman who was running away from the gas in the video. She was being treated with oxygen at a field hospital. “There were 70 wounded people,” he said. “Those who were at the impact site fainted.”
Meanwhile,Syrian fighters shelled a rally in support of Assad’s re-election, killing 21 people.
Mortar fire, which hit a tent where Assad supporters had gathered in the southern city of Daraa late Thursday, also wounded at least 30, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Assad faces two little-known challengers in the June 3 vote the opposition and their Western backers have labelled a farce, and is widely expected to clinch a third seven-year term.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the attack “is a clear message from rebels to the regime that there is not one safe area in which to hold the election.”